Sunday, November 22, 2009

Sunday Morning Roundup

-Does Barack Obama have a midwestern problem? 52% of voters there disapproved of him on our national poll this week, by far his worst performance in any region. A new Des Moines Register poll this morning finds him under 50 in Iowa, as did Quinnipiac in Ohio last week. We have a Wisconsin poll in the field this weekend and it looks like Obama will almost certainly be under 50% there, and possibly even in the red. Certainly the region has been hit unusually hard by the economic downturn, and a year after his election some of the blame seems to be shifting from Bush to Obama.

-Speaking of the Wisconsin poll, the impetus for it was to see what impact a Tommy Thompson candidacy might have on the races for Governor and Senate. Somewhat to my surprise he is no longer a particularly popular figure in the state. He would be competitive in a race for either of those offices, but he looks weaker than Scott Walker as a GOP gubernatorial candidate and he doesn't appear to be as popular as Russ Feingold. That said in this political climate- as we saw in Missouri last week- you can suffer from a popularity gap and still poll competitively.

Expect Senate numbers Tuesday, approval numbers Wednesday, Governor numbers Friday. Also tomorrow we're going to have our national look at the Congressional picture out as well as some stuff on corruption in North Carolina.

-Finally it's time to take another round of suggestions for where we poll- because of the holiday this will be fielded Monday-Wednesday the week after Thanksgiving with releases starting Thursday of that week.

Here are my guidelines:

-Statewide polls (I'm going to have a vote in a few weeks on non-southern Congressional districts we're interested in polling)-We don't want to poll something there are large volumes of recent polling on- trying to do something there's not a lot out there for-I generally don't like combined primary/general polls- so if a primary is in the next six months like Illinois or Texas we would only do a poll of likely primary voters or of likely general voters. If it's not until next fall like Florida I guess we can still do a combined one of both.

Leave your suggestions in the comments and I'll pick some finalists and let you vote from Wednesday through Sunday.

There's been very little public polling of the Illinois Senate race. Hawaii might be a good state to poll:I'm vaguely interested in what would happen if Governor Lingle ran for Senate and there hasn't been much polling of the open Governor's race. We also haven't seen any polling of Connecticut post Rell's retirement; and one more Dodd poll can't hurt us.

How about the Wyoming gubernatorial race? In the wake of Bloomberg's narrow win it would be interesting to see what the voter's think of Freudenthal breaking term limits to run again. That or the Oregan Gubernatorial Primary, Wasington GE, or North Dakota GE.

Oklahoma CD-2, currently held by Blue Dog Democrat Dan Boren. He seems to be picking up some unfavorability, even in a heavily-Democratic district, and has three (actually four - one hasn't filed w/ FEC) GOP opponents so far.

PPP, I have great respect for you guys. I would love to see further polling on Palin, especially in regard to the book tour's effect on public opinions (maybe specific polls). I'd like to see these favorable/unfavorable ratings in a blue state, red state and a purple state. Maybe New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Alabama.

As far as state races go, I'd love to see how healthcare has effected public perception in Arkansas (Lincoln), Louisiana (Landrieu) and North Dakota (Dorgan).

For the non-southern congressional races: MT-AL. Montana is strongly drifting to the Democrats, at least it was until 2008, and Rehberg's favorables are just mediocre according to PPP. He's usually regarded as invulnerable though...

His challengers Tyler Gernant and Dennis McDonald are kinda low-profile though, so you'd maybe be better off to poll his reelects.

Sean said...MuskogeePolitico must either love lying or has no idea what he's talking about calling Boren's district heavily Democratic. It went for McCain by around 20%.

Nope, you have no idea what you're talking about. I live here. I know what I'm talking about.

67.2% of registered voters in the 2nd District are Democrats. The Democrats are more conservative than most Democrats across the nation, which is why they always go for the Republican Presidential nominee. However, outside of presidential politics, it's a different story.

The Senate elections tend to be much closer in the 2nd District than across the state, leaning to the Democrat (if a strong candidate, like in 2004). There are no GOP State Senators in the district, and only 3 State Representatives that are not Democrats.

Anyway, the feeling on the ground here is that Dan Boren is not so popular as he once was. No polling has been done here, but I think that the GOP might have an opportunity to knock Boren off, or perhaps make it a fairly close race. I think it merits polling by PPP.

I'd like to renominate South Carolina. Even if you don't poll the GOP primary for President and Governor (the Governor one is in June) there's a lot of interesting stuff. The Gubernatorial numbers for one thing: has Mark Sanford damaged the GOP brand enough that a Democrat like Rex Rice can win?

Other cool stuff would be seeing whether the state wants Sanford thrown out of office now that a potential impeachment is only a few months away, whether Lindsey Graham's numbers are really suffering for his bipartisanship, and how Jim DeMint's newfound status as conservative hero is going over: could he possibly be too conservative for even South Carolina?

In Presidential numbers it's worth looking at Romney's numbers. In 2008 there was some polling that hinted he may have trouble in the South against a Democrat: here's a good chance to see if that could hold true in 2012, especially given the weak support among Republicans you've found with him.

I'd like to see Georgia polling, their gov and senate race could really be sleeper wins fro dems with Isakson polling under 50% in the latest round of polling (keening last year).

But other than that, texas special Senate election as well as the gubenatorial election with both having Bill White would be interesting. I heard he may move races, and that may dent dems chances at capturing that seat.

Polling on David Vitter in LA, and John Thune in SD would also be nice to see, everyone says HE IS U TOUCHble, but I have not seen any polling recently to support that.